In a wireless communications system, a wireless terminal such as a mobile node may be expected to experience different channel conditions with respect to a base station attachment point at different points in time. It is typical for a wireless terminal to communicate signal-to-noise ratio feedback information indicative of measured channel conditions to a base station based upon measured pilot channel signals, e.g., in the form of a predefined quantized report of a signal-to-noise ratio.
At some times a wireless terminal may only have a single connection with one base station attachment point. At other times, in some systems, the wireless terminal may have multiple simultaneous connections with multiple base station attachment points, e.g., corresponding to adjacent base stations.
For the same wireless terminal at a given point in time, channel conditions over different concurrent connections to different attachment points, e.g., adjacent base station attachment points, may be expected to be different. Under such conditions, the wireless terminal may be well suited to decide, from its perspective, which connection is preferable. It would be advantageous if methods and apparatus supported efficient signaling of such information to the base station attachment points.
Control signaling over the airlink represents overhead which takes away from the available resources available for payload, e.g., user data signaling. Therefore, it is advantageous when a particular type of control signaling is not required that the signaling not be performed. It would be also beneficial if quantization levels expressed in a report be matched to expected channel condition ranges of interest. In view of the above, it would be advantageous if methods and apparatus supported a flexible reporting structure of signal to noise ratio information, e.g., adapting the report format to the operating mode and/or preferences of the wireless terminal.